filtered by category: Efficiency

On Feb. 6, the Woodrow Wilson Center hosted a roundtable, “Innovative Partnerships to Improve China's Meat Supply Chains.” Speakers discussed how industry, policymakers, and NGOs can support the modernization of China's meat supply chains to ensure domestic and global food safety. As a part of that event, Erin Simon from World Wildlife Fund shared with the panel an innovative partnership between WWF and packaging company, Sealed Air, to minimize the environmental footprint of poultry, and to implement best practices for better food safety, sustainable packaging, storage, and retail distribution of poultry products in China.

Making sustainability a priority, the Marshik Dairy -- a fifth-generation family farm -- implemented a new, technologically advanced and energy efficient barn design on their 155-cow dairy. The new design included robotic milking facilities, energy efficient lighting and ventilation, and renewable wind and solar power.

Author:
Greg Koch, Director, Global Water Stewardship, The Coca-Cola Company

Greg Koch, The Coca-Cola Company

I did the unthinkable in London on Nov. 6; I spent a sunny, blue-sky day indoors. Cloudy, rainy weather seems to follow me whenever I get the chance to visit this great city, so it was tempting to stay outdoors.

No such luck and I was glad I didn’t.

I spent the day in the revitalized London Docklands at The Economist’sWorld Water Summit. The day was jam packed with impressive speakers, panel discussions and networking over tea breaks. Many of the leading voices and actors in the water space were present. Governments, development organizations, academia, civil society and industry were all well-represented. Importantly, there was also a wide geographic representation with participants from every continent (OK, not Antarctica but I did meet two people who had been there!).

One of the most significant challenges facing this generation is how we provide food, fiber and fuel for 9 billion people across the globe by 2050, while conserving finite natural resources.

Finding science-based solutions to sustainable food production is a complex and difficult task, one that requires collaboration and cooperation among all of us. One of the key steps is defining the sustainability framework, definitions, indicators and metrics for sustainable agriculture and food systems that can measure our continuous progress.

For the largest corporations in the United States, clean energy is business as usual. And it’s good for business and our planet. In fact, nearly half of the largest companies in the U.S. are capturing significant business value by cutting emissions and using clean forms of energy to power their operations.

Leaders such as Caterpillar, Dow Chemical, General Electric, General Motors, Procter & Gamble, Sprint, and Walmart have set targets across all three categories.

The largest companies in the Fortune 500 – the Fortune 100 – continue to lead: 60 percent of Fortune 100 companies have set clean energy and GHG reduction targets as of 2013. Since the first Power Forward report was released, companies like Apple and Pepsi have joined the ranks of other Fortune 100 companies with climate and clean energy targets.

The aggregate impact of the company actions is significant. Among the 53 Fortune 100 companies reporting on climate and energy targets to CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project), they are conservatively saving $1.1 billion annually through their emission reduction and renewable energy initiatives. In 2012 alone, these companies decreased their annual emissions by approximately 58.3 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent – comparable to retiring about 15 coal plants – saving them an average of $19 per ton of CO2 equivalent.

The scale of these savings is likely to keep climbing rapidly as more companies realize the potential for big cost reductions enabled by energy efficiency and renewable energy. Individual companies have already achieved significant savings and have high expectations going forward. For example, IBM has saved a cumulative $477 million through its annual energy conservation actions. Walmart expects to save $1 billion globally per year through its renewable energy and energy efficiency initiatives. Dell estimates that improvements in the efficiency of its products will save customers $1.1 billion annually. The trends are clear: leading companies are capturing business value by executing effective clean energy strategies, and with proven results, more are sure to join the pursuit.

Not too long ago I suppose, it would have been hard to believe that General Motors and World Wildlife Fund could be in agreement on how to protect the planet. But with today’s release of The 3% Solution report by WWF and CDP, it has become clear to me that we are on the same page when it comes to many of the actions needed to halt the steady rise of the globe’s temperature.

I say this with confidence because the activity described in this report is similar to what we have been doing for the last three years – and I’m here to say that it works.